A warning about nvidia 296.xx drivers

[Pob255]

over the weekend I was getting some nasty lock ups, screen would start flashing megenta and my pc would lock up, only on firefox.
At first I thought it was psu related seeing as how I'd swapped over to the be quiet, tried my enermax, still the same thing happened.
I ran some stress tests, 3dmark, furmark, super pi, all fine.
Tried some different ram, no effect.
then I realised certain websites where doing it, hexus being a big culprit (posting the 2nd part on my review was a right pain it kept locking up before I could finish)
I tried IE, still locking up, tried some other forums, fine no issues.
I though it might of been the update to hexus, however then youtube triggered it.
I was a bit worried it might be my graphics card, it's a classic graphics card type issue.
I did some digging today seems to be an issue with the nvidia drivers, quite a few reports of it, effecting 500 series cards (mainly 550 and 560) and seems to be connected to flash.

I've uninstalled 296.10 and reinstalled 285.58, here's hoping I have no more issues.

[kalniel]

If you still have issues try reducing your RAM command rate to 2N/T (if it's not at that already)

[Pob255]

it is already I've not put the corsair back in yet, still on 2x2gb of crucial 1333mhz @ t2, nothing fancy the basic crucial workhorse stuff, borrowed from work to test, it's known working fine.
So far no no lockups, it seems to be the nvidia drivers, there's quite a few reported cases over on their forum, even a set of beta drivers that have had partial success.
It seems to be an issue when the gpu goes in and out of a very low power/frequency state (ie idling to doing something)
Another solution is to plug in a 2nd monitor, because the idle doesn't go as low then. However I've no space for a 2nd monitor even it I had one spare (other than my old 19" crt emergency backup)

[KeyboardDemon]

Shouldn't you be on the 3xx.xx drivers by now?

[Pob255]

Shouldn't you be on the 3xx.xx drivers by now?

ummm maybe, I don't touch my drivers much, as that tends to avoid many issues, I only just updated as the nvidia updater popped up with this as the new version.
Well I'll give it a go and see if it works 301.42

[MaddAussie]

301.42 has issues if you have a factory OC'ed card I ended up going back to 296.xx (45 I think)

[Lee H]

The only issue I'm having with 301.42 is that they keep reverting my 3D vision from the active 3D vision mode to the anaglyphic mode.